Oh, the hands that will hold you home

    At home, he walked to his room after bringing the kids back. He stood in front of his small, oval mirror, with its gold coat peeling off. The lines, the runes… They were all still here. Still alight with Dankovsky’s touch. They seemed to be dimming, like a waning moon, slowly melting into his skin. But they were still here. He dropped to his knees. His head hit the wall. A wounded cry was punched out of him. He felt lost. He felt haunted. He felt teased and played with from beyond the grave like nothing more than a feather found by stray cats and torn to shreds. Chewed and spat out by what he had promised to protect and then killed, its teeth poisoned and sharp even in death.
He got up, exited the room. Murky ran to him and grabbed onto his leg, asking to be walked around with her feet on his boot. He stayed clear from mirrors. He fixed dinner (having two children under his wings had forced him to keep consistent meal schedules after years of absolutely abhorrent habits as a student). He ushered the little ones to their bedrooms; Murky wanted a story and Sticky wanted to stay up late. Fine, he said. Murky got her story. Sticky got a third informal lesson on herbs preservation, which he listened to keenly, perched on the edge of his bed. 

Burakh went outside under the bright round moon. The steppe was ablaze with its crisp, searing white light, stretching ivory hills and frozen grass to the horizon, where the pitch black sky bit it off from the rest of the world. Flames still danced, in the distance, in the hearths of Shekhen. Cowbells rang lightly. Burakh sat, then lay down. His long coat couldn’t keep the frost from biting at his hair, shoulders, back, thighs, but he didn’t care. 
He… told himself he didn’t think the miracles could have survived, because they couldn’t have, because he killed them with his own hands, because he bled them dry and then drank from them. He told himself the lines were a visitation, a haunting. Still, he lay down. He spoke into the cold: “Could you speak to me? Could you tell me anything?” He added: “please…”
The night didn’t speak back. The earth stayed cold in the frost, frozen silent. He heard the bulls, somewhere over the hill. He heard laments and dirges, all drowned, all devoured, by the winter: the voices of Brides that still danced as no grass grew. He stood up and brushed his coat dry. 
He walked home skirting the cemetery; not a bell was heard.

Burakh went to bed late. He sat by his father’s bedroom’s door, bringing his hands together — he didn’t pray, because he didn’t know how, and he didn’t tell him anything, because not knowing whether or not he could hear was more painful than any of the two choices. Burakh spoke for himself, low, slow, the words coming from his lips and not his throat or chest. He spoke for the floorboards, for the walls, for the beams of the roof. For the whole house, that still felt haunted. He had vague memories of the Architect’s drunk ramblings, about buildings that were alive. Well, Burakh thought, maybe he could give them life, or maybe they already had it. He spoke a bit more loudly so the house could hear him. He realized he believed more in it listening than his own father. It would have made him sad if he wasn’t so drained. He got up. He kissed the door at eye level and walked away. 
He undressed and tucked himself into bed. He folded the blanket so he could hold it in his arms — he missed, oh, he missed fingers gently combing through his hair, he missed legs intertwining with his, he missed a breath he could base his own on to lull him to sleep. The house was silent. He slept like a brick. 

_______

    In the morning, he went in front of the mirror again. The lines had paled some more, leaving little but the sparks Dankovsky had noticed — like mica, he had said. They vaguely reminded Burakh of the freckles on his shoulders that disappeared every autumn. A bitter smile tugged at his lips: he wasn’t quite sure these lines would reappear come the spring. The thought hammered at his heart, making his ribs ache; he promptly looked away. 
Come on, Burakh! Grow some guts in your heart!
Someone came in with a cough. Someone came in with the sniffles. He washed his hands thoroughly, thought he spotted blood under his nails, but he shook the vision off and they were clean. Sticky sat atop a tall chair like an inquisitive bird. 

In the evening, he went outside, lay down on the cold bright earth again. He asked for a word, got none. He begged for one, got silence some more. He stood up with his heart out of his chest, and carried it, heavy and dark, home.

____________________

    Burakh needed a few days. Once the lines and the sigils had fully vanished, not even the trace of sparks left on his skin, he sighed, sighed loudly. He was torn. It meant, at last, that the haunting on his skin had molted off of him like a lizard’s skin. It meant, at last, that the very last instance of a potential miracle had finally wilted. He, for a second, wondered where it could have gone, and thought maybe, it had gone under his flesh. Maybe, it had seeped into him like blood through cloth, like ink through too-thin paper. A bitter laugh tore its way into his mouth, ramming into his gritted teeth. 

On this day, he made infusions from herbs: he crushed thinly stems and leaves, and cut steppe berries in very small pieces, which he then put into thinly-woven silk bags, and fastened these closed with sewing thread. He made a few bags and, braving the cold, brought some to Lara. Feeling courageous, he brought some to the Architect and his brother — he had no idea if they’d even drink something else than twyrine, but it was worth a shot. It was his peace offering. It was a griever’s present to other mourners. It was a connection, the last thing he could still do.

On this evening, for once, he did write. It started like this: 
    “Dear Bachelor, (or oynon, or erdem, or Daniil, or whichever name you’ve liked me to call you the most)

I was, I will admit, scared to write back. For months, I was. I cannot even explain why. I am not eloquent as you are, so perhaps I kept myself from writing out of fear that my written word would fail me to embarrassing extents. I was also scared I’d just spill open. Write too much, too bold, too (again) embarrassing. We’re well past that, now. What I was so scared to accidentally pour out on paper, I have already told you. Shown you… I can’t wait to write any longer, but I do hope you’ll forgive my less-than-formal language.” 

He stopped, but he hadn’t run out of ideas. No, he… had quite a few. He rose from his chair and peeked outside of his room. He walked, velvet-footed, in the hallway, and made sure the two little ones were asleep. He went downstairs, checked that no one had invited themselves over, and rushed back to his room. He put a cowbell right by the door as he shut it swiftly, just so anyone entering would make as much noise as possible. He sat back down. He twirled the pencil in his hands. He brought it to the paper; his hand was shaking. 

He sent the letter at dawn.

____________________

    It didn’t take much to live without magic, he thought. It took discipline. It took the strength to wake up in the mornings. It took many people: the kids—his or otherwise, the Kains and the Crucible already buzzing with new ideas, the twins whom he spotted many times, especially the Architect who, flanked by the ghostly gravekeeper girl, put his easel wherever he pleased. It took knowing he was needed. It took having wounds and ailments to treat—the most benign, the most simple, the most human of ills. It took the Bachelor’s letters which, after his own missives, came to him frequently. It took being bothered by Lara who liked to walk in and try to read what the two men exchanged in these messages, prompting Burakh to hold the paper against his heart and covering the back with his hand to make sure she shouldn’t see a single word — and it took knowing he wasn’t bothered at all, and had missed them playing like such. Like kids. (He still made sure she couldn’t read any part of the letters. There was no way he could let her.) 
Eventually, it took the snow and, later, the morning frost, rising from the ground every morning, embracing the steppe in a low, ghostly fog that dissipated with the first lights of the sun. It took the grass, growing small, perky, green, piercing the hoar under his boots.

    February went and March came. 
The steppe was waking up lazily. The snow and ice hadn’t quite melted, and the wetlands took their time replenishing, swallowing the early spring rainfalls and the water-soaked arteries that ran from below the pavement of the town, then south. Tall grass rose to mid-calf where the white cover slowly seeped into the ground, Burakh noticed when he walked to the cemetery and back; its color walked the crest between green and yellow.

    March went and April came. 
The snow had melted and, walking to Shekhen, Burakh found right by his left foot,
a single
blade of 
swevery. 

    April went and May came.
The day was surprisingly dry, high and tall winds galloping restlessly across the neverending hills, tearing out of the trees and back across the hills again the scent of small, budding apple blossoms. White and yellow flowers already climbed out of the ground. Pasque flowers, tulips and irises were timid under the heavy sky, but they still yielded to Burakh as he wandered around. Even without its miracles, without its creatures, its clay-fleshed children and their bone-pale hands, the earth breathed. The earth sighed out a spring wet and vivid out west, a spring that carried itself in places where even the earth had never been alive, that extended beyond the horizon, beyond the rising and the setting sun, beyond the eastern grasslands and the Capital. No miracles here except the dance of the stars.
The Capital… Burakh put it in his mind to ask Dankovsky about what bloomed here. (He did later in the evening and received, a few weeks later, a detailed report, with a flower pressed between two folds of the paper. Its smell was buried beneath the scent of the teas, the scent of cedar and bergamot of the Bachelor’s soap. Burakh couldn’t care. He observed the blossom and the stem, carefully preserved. He could see where Dankovsky’s fingers had gently adjusted it against the paper.)

Walking home through the cemetery, the bells were ringing. They were ringing fast, loud, erratic, almost elated. Burakh’s entire spine tensed. The wind, he told himself, it could be only the wind. The bells chimed and sang and chimed some more as he hurried his steps. They followed him home and still trilled to his ears when he shut the door, pressing his back to it as if it could keep the noises out. His eyes were wide. His breath was hiccuped. Sticky stood in the hallway, an eyebrow quirked. Burakh raised a hand in front of him, a “don’t come closer”, a “don’t worry about me” that shook violently. He wanted to say “I’m being haunted again” but didn’t. His heartbeat was so loud he felt like the whole house could hear it. He didn’t want hope. He didn’t want the same hope that had him slice his hand and bleed himself into the ground, the hope that received not even a sigh of acknowledgement. Burakh rushed to the kitchen, diving head-first into a cookbook to distract himself.

    It was not June yet, but the days had started to stretch themselves over the horizon, the sunrise waking Burakh earlier and earlier with each passing dawn. 
Well, this time, it was not quite dawn yet. He jumped out of bed, got dressed, and slipped through the door without a sound. He walked eastward into the steppe.
He walked eastward and stumbled in tall grass, he walked eastward and the bells were chiming, he walked eastward under not a breath of wind. His chest started to hurt. His heart pounded. He walked eastward and east of Shekhen, and—they didn’t yield to him! they didn’t make a sound! but he still found them: a blade of swevery, then another. They stood like two needles in the pincushion of the soil. And he stood, too. He leaned forward. His mouth fell agape, and a choked, wordless hiccup leaped out of him. He brought a hand to the leaves: they were silky, a bit wet, his own hands shook; he brought fingers to the blossoms. They mostly were still buds: small, round, timid buds, but they still seemed to turn to him when he touched them. Like eyes landing on his face. Seeking his traits like heliotropes seek the sun. The image of this punched him in the chest and he stepped backwards, almost tripping, and ran. The fires of Shekhen scared him like an animal as his whole body bent under the weight of a guilty, thoughtless, grieving, bewildered and completely-fucking-lost mind. 

The swevery and the bells. The swevery and the bells. He refused to let himself think, to let himself think about it, and he threw himself to the ground where the impact sent a shockwave of pain into his arm, his flank, down his hip and leg. 
He rolled on his stomach, he rolled on his back, he stilled himself lying down, arms and legs parted wide like the sky could crush him. He wanted nothing more. He wanted nothing more than suffocation to make his thoughts, galloping like wild horses, shut up. He wanted to smother them like he had smothered the divine uniqueness of the living earth with his choice—”way of love” or not. 
He could barely breathe himself, his throat tight and knotted, wringing out of him whimpers and whispers of terrified incomprehension. 
He had killed. He had killed. He heard himself speak it more than he was aware he did: 
“If you hear me… Can you speak to me?”
He tensed. He held his breath. 
Not a word. 

Not a breath of wind over his face. 
Not a rumble, not a moan.
He didn’t know what he was expecting. 
He could cut the earth open, he could stitch it back, but he couldn’t speak to it. 
He couldn’t speak to her. Or rather, now, she couldn’t speak to him. Whose fucking fault, Burakh? 
He asked. Lower this time. He asked again. Again. Again. The bells grew muffled. The wind picked up. The grass swirled, bent, (danced, almost) caressed his cheek as they brushed on each side of his face.

Then, he heard; he didn’t hear a voice, not with his ears, his brain, his head: he heard it with his chest, through his spine, directly digging into his heart. It came crashing against him. It burst through him, tearing his lungs out of him; he’d never been to the seaside but could imagine this was what it felt to be a chalk cliff shattered by the restless sea; he heard:

I
WAS
ASLEEP.

His mouth fell open. 
He didn’t move. He didn’t move a fucking inch. The gasp he took seared through his throat like branding iron.

“You…” he muttered. 

I 
AM
AWAKE.

“But…”

DO  YOU  THINK
YOU  CAN  EAT
ME
WHOLE
LIKE  A  HUMAN
HEART?

“I don’t, it was never my intention. I wanted to save you. I had a choice to make,” he pleaded; he couldn’t hear its—her, the earth, the alive Earth—tone and was terrified. “I had a choice, and…”

AND
YOU  MADE  IT.

“And I did,” he spoke, unbelievably low, just enough for his own heart to hear. 

YOU  WERE  TORN
BY  LOVE.

He didn’t answer (he was).

I
LOVE
YOU.

His face twisted. His lips quivered and convulsed, sorrow nailing him to the ground straight through the chest like he was nothing but a pinned butterfly.
“Even after what I’ve done?”

I  LOVE  YOU
BECAUSE
YOU  DID  WHAT  YOU  HAD  TO
BECAUSE
YOU  DID  WHAT  YOU’VE  DONE 

“Killed—” he stood up on his elbows, coughed out a sob that threatened to choke him “—you? Do you love me because I killed you?”
He fell back. There was a lull, a silent heartbeat. Everything stood still. Oh no. Oh no, no, no…
Then, thundering, striking through him, resonating through each one of his limbs: 

DO I LOOK DEAD TO YOU?

“Shouldn’t you be? I k—”

I  AM  EVER-GROWING.
I  AM  EVER-FLOWING.
I  AM  AT  THE  CORE  OF  CONSTANT  DEATH  AND  REGENERATION.
I BIRTH DEATH AND I BIRTH CREATION.
I BIRTH KILLERS AND I BIRTH HEALERS, 
IT'S  ONLY  NATURAL  —  I  BIRTHED  YOU,  MY  SON .

Burakh honored the incredibly loud, busy, buzzing silence. He breathed slowly. His mouth stayed agape, an open door where words hurried, never quite making it past the threshold. His eyes stung.

YOU  CAN’T  NOT
KEEP  ME  ALIVE.
YOU  CAN’T  NOT
KEEP  ME  AWAKE. 
I  SLUMBER. 
I  RISE. 
SO  DO  YOU,
EVERY  DAY  YOU  GIVE  ME,
EVERY  DAY  I  GIVE  YOU.

“The miracles,” Burakh stuttered, dazed and lost and stunned still, “how could they have… I killed… The great Aurochs… They don’t wander the earth…”

 DON’T THEY? LOOK AROUND.

The words jolted him up, as if pulled awake, and he did look around. He saw the penned bulls of Shekhen—he didn’t realize he was so close, he had gotten so close, he had walked so far—that grazed; one had a brown coat, one had a black coat, one had a crooked leg, one had a chipped horn. They ate peacefully, holding in their strong necks a grace never seen. He looked into the brown eye of one and saw glimpses of the infinite. 
He opened his mouth to speak and was cut off:

BULLS STAND WHERE THE GREAT AUROCHS ONCE DID. 
YOUR KIND, YOUR KIN, STANDS WHERE THEIR GUARDIANS ONCE DID.
I HAVE GIVEN BULLS TO YOUR MOTHERS,
YOUR MOTHERS HAVE GIVEN ME 
DAUGHTERS AND SONS TO CARE FOR THEM.
THEY STAND BY YOUR SIDE, 
AND YOU STAND BY THEIRS. 
THE GREAT AUROCHS SHRUNK THEMSELVES SO THEY COULD BE HELD BY YOU. 
SO YOU COULD TOUCH THEM. 
SO YOU COULD WRAP YOUR ARMS AROUND THEIR NECKS,
SO YOU COULD PUT YOUR CHILDREN AND SIBLINGS ON THEIR BACKS,
AND WANDER FOREVERMORE.

Burakh kept silent. Then, spoke:
“Why… did they tell me the miracles would vanish? Why did they tell me… you’d die?”

WHY DID THEY TELL YOU?
LIKELY BECAUSE THEY WERE TOLD.
I BIRTH LIARS ALONGSIDE KEEPERS OF TRUTH.
DIDN’T THESE LIARS WANT TO LIVE TOO? 
DIDN’T THEY WANT TO THRIVE?
WHAT IS A LIVING ILL IF NOT A JUDAS,
IF NOT A TRAITOR, TURNING YOUR BODY
AGAINST YOURSELF,
IF NOT A PEEPHOLE
LOOKING THROUGH YOUR HEART
INTO YOUR FEARS.

A silence kept. Her voice, deep, low, pulling him in like an enchanted well, pounded against his chest.

LIARS SPEAK MY TONGUE BECAUSE I SPEAK OF LOVE
AND THEY LOVE
THEMSELVES
AND THEY LOVE
EACH OTHER.
AND LOVE
AT ITS MOST POISONOUS
IS WANTING EVERYONE
TO GO DOWN INTO THE GRAVE
WITH YOU.

A silence kept, again. Burakh’s lips joined, pulled thinly into a line. His chin dipped as his face contorted. He closed his eyes, heard himself breathe heavily. He held the poison right where it was, in the middle of his throat, he didn’t swallow nor spit. It was expelled like a bloodletting when a single sharp, raw, hoarse sob punched him in the lungs, and he curled on himself. 

YOU  ARE  OF  LOVE.
THAT’S  WHAT  MADE  YOU  SO  SAD. 
IF  YOU  WEREN’T  OF  LOVE
YOU  WOULDN’T  HAVE  CHOSEN
YOU  WOULDN’T  GRIEVE
YOU  WOULDN’T  STRUGGLE
YOU  WOULDN’T  DRINK  THE  BLOOD  OF  MY  WOUNDS
AND YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TOLD YOUR LOVE
TO ANYBODY.

Burakh felt himself grow red. He felt hit by a teenaged embarassment of having parents go through his stuff. He sure hoped the Earth couldn’t read his exchanges with Dankovsky, he sure fucking hoped so. It didn’t make sense if she could, but it didn’t make more sense if she couldn’t. When the Earth didn’t insist about any kind of letters, he lay back down. Spoke once more:
“How could I have done this to you?”

HAVEN'T YOU PULLED A THORN OUT OF ME?
HAVEN'T YOU PULLED A RIB OUT OF ME?
OF THIS BONE BROKEN OFF,
OF THIS BRANCH SNAPPED FROM MY SPINE,
FLOWERS WILL GROW.
MY SON, NOURISH AND WATER ME.
THE SALT OF YOUR SWEAT, OF YOUR TEARS, FLOWS PLENTILY.
MY SON, MY SON...
I'M UNDER YOUR FEET.
I AM AT YOUR FEET.
I AM IN YOUR CALVES, YOUR KNEES.
I FLOW IN YOUR ARTERIES.
ARE YOU ALIVE, MY ONE?
BECAUSE THEN, I AM.
GET UP! AND RUN!

And the wind slapped Burakh across the face with unspeakable violence. He jumped on his feet and missed tumbling right over. The bulls shook their heads fiercely, hoofed the ground with ardor, and bellowed until their chanting voices grew hoarse. Burakh ducked his head into the breeze and ran, the air pushing him fervently, gnawing at his calves, at the back of his thighs, shoving the grass and herbs and flowers into his steps, they seemed to cling to him, to kiss his stride fervently. 
Dashing through Shekhen, he found a Bride, her brown eyes wide, bewildered. 

    “Khayaala,” she spoke, and her voice was high-pitched, helplessly astonished, “the Earth is moving.”
    “She is,” Burakh replied, struggling to contain his elation.
    “Khayaala, she’s speaking.”
    “She is, basaghan, she is, and I’ve heard her myself.”

The Bride’s traits contorted wildly, followed by her body, which bent sharply, like nothing but a twig, at the stomach. She threw her hands to the ground, her legs buckling under her, and pulled herself up faster than she had fallen, stretching backwards as her arms reached for the sky. Her neck extended as she reached behind and her voice thundered through her entire chest: she screamed, she wailed, she sobbed until her throat was raw, then she laughed, and laughed, and brought her hands to her mouth to kiss them before pushing them against the soil. She dropped to her knees, she lay flat on the ground, her arms extended as if she was embracing it whole; she sprung on her feet again and did it again, and again, and soon Burakh heard one more, then one more, then one more voice alongside hers. 

Bayarlaa! Bi khareeb! Bite kharaan!  A Bride ran into the settlement, screaming just that: Bite kharaan! Bite kharaan! She dropped on the ground, contorted and twisted, rose on her legs and kept running again, fingertips grazing the crowns of the tall grasses that met her step. Burakh ran again, ran back home. 

The house was silent (it didn’t speak) the rooms were silent (there was no ghost) and he felt his chest full to burst, and a laugh tore through him, and a sob tore through right after, and he held the front of his sweater as if it was bloodstained. Murky was in the hallway, and she ran to hold him. He lifted her up, overflowing with it—with love, right in the ways he was made—and while she wasn’t usually very fond of it, she let him this time. Sticky’s head poked out, and before he had the time to ask what the hell was going on, he was pulled in the hug too. 

    “You smell like herbs, doc,” he said into Burakh’s arms.
    “And twyre’s not even in bloom yet. Just so you wait a few months. You’ll have the worst headache you’ve ever had.”

It was a light-hearted, playful threat. It was a promise. 
Burakh picked grass kernels off his pants and boots. His palms were red with clay dust.